Sony a9 underwater review: Shooting great white sharks

Backscatter Underwater Video & Photo is the largest underwater imaging equipment supplier in the world. They love the water, and they personally dive and shoot with the gear they sell. This article originally appeared on their website, and is reproduced here with permission.

With the high speed shooting of the Sony a9 mirrorless camera and just released Nauticam NA-A9 underwater housing, we decided the best underwater photography test was to take it to the island of Guadalupe off the Baja California coast to shoot great white sharks.

The white sharks are a perfect subject to test with this camera due to their speed, relative unpredictability, stealthiness, and camouflage. All of these factors require a camera to have fast and accurate autofocus, fast continuous shooting mode, and a really deep image buffer to capture as many pictures as possible to nail that one special shot.

Sony designed the Sony a9 to do just that and aimed this camera to directly compete with the Nikon D5 and Canon 1DX II, both of which are the top cameras from Nikon and Canon for high-speed shooting.

Blazing Fast Autofocus Performance

The Sony a9 has a crazy amount of AF points at 693 when set in wide mode that covers 93% of the frame and updates focus at a stunning rate of 60 times per second. I used the Sony 16-35mm f/4 lens exclusively for this trip and let the camera pick from the 693 autofocus points on its own.

With this camera and lens combination, I did not have any problems with the camera and lens not tracking the subject, even during high speed “attacks" of the sharks going after the bait, when letting the camera choose on its own among the 693 AF points. Only when a shark was at the limit of visibility did the AF system lose the subject and started to track the water surface instead. When a shark came back to be within the limits of visibility, the AF system immediately picked it back up again. That being said, the visibility at Guadalupe Island is about 70 to 100 feet, which is so far beyond what any acceptable composition distance is for underwater photography.

A major advantage of the autofocus system of the Sony a9 is the ability to track focus WHILE rapid fire burst shooting without any screen or viewfinder blackout. This allows continuous shooting, auto focusing, framing, and zooming all to happen at the same time seamlessly. This was a godsend for the rapidly changing distance to subject and framing that happens as these sharks move through the scene.

For shooting technique, I just mashed down and held the AF-ON button on the back of the camera and the shutter release simultaneously, while at the same time moving the zoom knob and panning the camera for framing the shot. The camera continued to shoot and focus track the subject with no issues. This technique might seem rather crude, but worked quite well given the task at hand.

The Sony a9 is the fastest shooting full frame camera on the planet. Combined with super fast autofocus, it has the ability to capture the subtlest movements. This image sequence was shoot at 20 frames per second. 1/400, F11, ISO 1000

Fastest Shooting Speed for a Full Frame Camera Ever

The Sony a9 can shoot up to 20 frames per second in RAW with a 241 shot buffer when using the electronic shutter, and 5 frames per second with the mechanical shutter. The electronic shutter does not sync with strobes (not that a strobe could keep up!) while the mechanical shutter does sync with strobes. The custom function button C3 is setup from the factory to allow the photographer to choose between mechanical or electronic shutter.

There are three continuous shooting modes on the camera--high, medium, and low. I kept it on continuous high the whole time and used the C3 button to choose between mechanical and electronic depending on whether I wanted to use strobes in the shots.

For shots with strobes, I kept my strobes at 1/4 power to ensure a super fast recycle that would keep up with the camera’s 5 frames per second shutter. We hope that in the future Sony will make an electronic shutter that will sync with strobes and get past the mechanical flash sync speed limit of 1/250 second.

Exposure Technique for White Sharks—Auto ISO

With distances and the amount of light reaching the subject changing rapidly with shooting great white sharks, it’s hard to shoot fully manual and nail each exposure each time.

We’re up against a few limits that aren't exactly ideal for going over to program auto exposure, aperture priority, or shutter priority. A fast shutter speed is needed to freeze the motion of the shark. A higher aperture is needed to get the corners sharp with a wide angle zoom lens behind a dome.

Needing to set both of these in the past has meant needing to shoot full manual exposure, but with Sony’s excellent ISO performance and customizable Auto ISO feature, manual exposure mode with Auto ISO is how I shot each one of these shots in this review.

Sony a9 vs. Sony A7R Mark II vs. Nikon D810

Sony’s stills image quality in their flagship cameras have been at the top of the heap of not only the mirrorless camera category, but also beating out top level SLRs as well for the last few years. The color, sharpness, detail, and noise levels are all excellent and find the Sony a9 among the top of the list in each of these categories.

While the higher resolution cameras of the Sony a7R II and Nikon D810 will edge out the Sony a9 in ultimate image quality, neither of those cameras come close to the speed of this camera, and it’s hard to find another camera besides these two that will outperform the Sony a9 in image quality with what we have available to shoot underwater.

Who Is This Camera For?

The Sony a9 doesn’t come cheap. At $4,500, it is the most expensive full frame mirrorless camera on the market today. Then again, it’s designed to run head to head against the Nikon D5 which does 12 frames per second, and the Canon 1DX II, which does 16 frames per second—those cameras are $6,500 and $6,000, respectively.

Sony definitely shakes up the established competition in this area by besting these cameras in terms of overall speed and image quality. While there may be additional features such as 4K 60p video and the best ambient light white balance out there with the Canon 1DX II, the Sony a9 comes in at a much lower price point, especially for the amount of still image shooting performance you’ll get.

If you are someone who likes to shoot fast moving pelagic sea life such as sharks, dolphins, whales, mantas, sailfish, etc., this is definitely the camera for you. The speed of focus, focus tracking and shooting, and 241 RAW shot image buffer is mind boggling and second to none. You’ll be able to get the shot with focus nailed better than any other camera out there today.

For someone who needs more resolution than 24 megapixels, and must have pro level 4K video with accurate custom white balance at depth, those are the only areas where this camera will fall short.

The 1DX II can achieve a proper white balance underwater. This is huge for video, which I suspect is heavily on the minds of the typical user. I would like to see if Sony has improved their color science.

As has been mentioned already, with a wide lens, stopped down, this isn't exactly a challenge - especially in what is rather excellent lighting - I've shot in lots of venues where I wish I could get f/8-f/9, 1/250s, @ ISO320-400.

While these beasts are (just slightly ;-) ) more intimidating than your average bride, as far as auto-focus is concerned, achieving critical focus in this setting is about as hard as hitting the broad side of a bus.

Yes, would love to have this quality underwater. Problem is, the things I am shooting are much smaller and closer with much busier backgrounds, so I already stumble into depth-of-field and autofocus problems with the LX100 underwater. Anyway, my budget does not allow for any of the FF Ax models, let alone the necessary housings etc.

Sorry guys but this is not photography anymore: this is filmaking.It's just to shoot a video then decide which is the best frame.I hope lytro will develop a way to choose the depth of field in post production and finally we'll discuss if the photographer is really necessary...

Haha. Interesting reading the FF Sony forums, No actual users of A9 report overheating. The only ones complaing about overheating are talking about older generation cameras or are just referring to other people talking about overheating. This is a non-issue on the A9.

Wait... The lens used was 16-35 at f/8 or higher f-stop...The shallowest DOF would be achieved at 35 mm, that's the worst case scenario.To fit the entire shark into the frame (again, the worst case scenario, no cropping) it should be some 20 ft away... At this subject distance, focal length and aperture, everything from 10 ft to infinity would be in reasonable focus.

You can say whatever you like to say since there no directly comparison between Canon, Nikon and Sony under the same environment.You had better to bring along Canon and Nikon and shot the photos at the same time and same position before you determine which one is better.

Most of the time the sharks don't get close enough for a fisheye. Ideally you would like a pass of about 1-2 feet with a fisheye. You could wait around for 3 days and never get that, so I decided to use the 16-35 which would ahve a higher chance of success. Thanks for the comment!

I can assure you that I wrote this and Sony had no part in it. These are my direct observations and opinions. I don't like to "trash" anything but point our positives and negatives. With all the cameras I've shot over the years, I can't say that there is 1 camera that is the absolute best at everything. In the article I do talk about that I feel the Sony A7R Mark II and Nikon D810 will have better image quality and that Sony cameras still cannot execute a manual white balance at depth underwater like a Canon camera can. I write these articles from an underwater perspective to help people decide which camera would be best for them and their shooting style. Thanks for taking the time to read an comment on the article

under water with sharks, been done with. anything else? like sony a9 surviving a free fall? =) its been done with a phone; why not the a9? with a really expensive sony lense please. Oh, maybe let the shark swallow it, for fun purposes.

I'm not sure that 21 frame collage is much of a testament for the AF - especially at F11. You could have probably got the same result with fixed AF as there is very little fore/aft subject movement. A much more impressive test would be to see a similar sequence with the shark swimming toward or away quickly - if toward, hopefully from a cage haha.

Also note the huge buffer and 20FPS only applies when set to lossy compressed 12bit RAW.

"A much more impressive test would be to see a similar sequence with the shark swimming toward or away quickly "Wrong because it is not about AF speed (cameras have been good at high-speed AF for years). It is about unpredictable movement.

The hardest thing you can do on an AF system is track fast movement directly towards/away from the camera, and especially as the subject nears MFD and the movements have to be much larger while maintaining accuracy. It stresses both the camera and the lens' AF motor to their maximums. Unpredictable movement is generally not that hard to track provided of course you can keep the subject within the frame - just look at Nikon's 3D tracking or Sony's eye tracking. On top of that, most unpredictable movement is side-to-side without major distances changes (like a BIF), which makes it even easier to track.

"There are essentially two methods for photographing a moving subject using continuous AF. There's the tried and true method of selecting a single AF point or Zone, and attempting to keep the subject within that area by moving the camera. And then there is subject tracking, where you tell the camera who or what you'd like to track, and it attempts to do so, while also maintaining focus.

Of the two, the former is something most modern hybrid AF systems have no trouble with and Canon DSLRs in particular have historically excelled in this area.

Dpreview's testing methods are exactly what I describe, and you are supporting my point by referencing the 80D review, which is notoriously bad at AF tracking. They use a biker moving directly toward the camera in a straight line to put maximum strain on the AF system, while simulating a real world scenario. They do this because it's the biggest challenge for the AF system and exposes any flaws. You can clearly see that the 80D in their review only had 2 or 3 frames in focus out of the 16 frame set, and the bike was moving very slowly. A very poor result. The photographer is also part of the equation when they are tasked with keeping the subject under the AF points at all times.

If you compare this to the Nikon D500 3D Tracking results, for example, you will see they had a near 100% hit rate. Sony's eye tracking is similar - they deal with unpredictable movement remarkably well.

While I agree that one could preset focus at F11 and the depth of field could take over, that would require knowing when and where the shark would be to preset the focus. I could be getting banged around in the cage for 20 minutes or more with nothing happening, then all of a sudden, literally out of the blue, a shark "attacks" the bait. Keep in mind my max visibility in any direction is most likely 70 feet and at that point contrast is very hard to see. I only have time to mash down the AF-ON button and start shooting. Shooting underwater is much different from topside. We have extreme levels of lack of contrast, color loss due to filtering from the water, water turbidity, and animals that are designed to blend into their background. These are conditions that test the effectiveness of AF systems. The fact that this camera tracked the shark without fail in these conditions is extremely impressive to me. Thanks for taking the time to read and post a comment!

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